The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Popes and the Papacy

Book excerpt: The Complete Idiot's Guide® to the Popes and the Papacy offers a comprehensive look at the history, trials, and triumphs of the Bishops of Rome. This book offers an easy-to-understand historical survey of the papacy, which is among the oldest institutions on earth, and may well be the oldest continuous position of leadership in existence. It's all here: remarkable stories of popes who held immense power within the Church and popes who served as figureheads; popes who ruled as supreme authorities in their own right and popes who offered an inspired model of resistance to secular tyrannies; popes who lost sight of the dictates of their own faith and popes who set sublime moral and devotional examples to the world. The book offers history, trivia, and trends new and old -- as well as a look at the future of the office. This is an entertaining and enlightening look at one of the world's most remarkable jobs, one that has guided Catholicism for two millennia and wields an influence today.